


all the lovely things you are to me

by blanchtt



Category: Carol (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 21:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12780219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: She’d said it, once, and Therese had looked at her as if she had written her a poem or composed her a symphony. Flung out of space. But Carol thinks that she’s not flung out of space so much as she inhabits a permanent place just a shade besides it – some tangential reality that is nearly the same as her own, but not quite.





	all the lovely things you are to me

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting a few deleted fics.

  


 

 

 

 

 

She’d said it, once, and Therese had looked at her as if she had written her a poem or composed her a symphony. _Flung out of space_. But Carol thinks that she’s not flung out of space so much as she inhabits a permanent place just a shade beside it – some tangential reality that is nearly the same as her own, but not quite.

 

Therese sets down the tray on the coffee table, pours her a cup of tea, and leaves it be for a moment, to allow it to cool.

 

They are in their living room, and with Therese there is no need for decorum. No straight-backed chairs and inane chatter, no right or wrong amount of acquaintances to be in attendance, no ridiculously obvious request for tea and the stiff, time-honored retort from the hostess – _certainly, and how would you like it?_

 

Therese lets her take her own cup, drink as much as she’d like before putting it down, and doesn’t ask if she’d like more sugar or milk, cups of which are on the tray placed there by Therese for her to choose from if she so wishes.

 

Carol thinks of that day at the Ritz, of the invitation she had written so stiff and formal that she had wondered if Therese would simply throw it away – like she had done with the Frankenberg greeting card before fishing it out of the wastebasket again, intrigued by its very appearance despite its formality – and how she had yearned to write, as open as the letter she had left with Abby to deliver, _I have not seen you for so long_.

 

Therese curls up on the couch with her cup, leans against her, and listens to her talk about her day.

 

-

 

She’s not so old as to chalk it up to age – at least, not entirely.

 

Carol meets Therese’s friends, finally. Phil and Dannie and Genevieve, the only other young lady and the only one from money, if she’d have to guess. Only a matter of fact and not a judgement, for out of the little crowd it is Genevieve who eyes her and with an almost visible deduction understands where they would each stand, in some other setting she’s sure neither of them feel any inclination to seek out. When they had met Therese had only stalled in her presence, caught unaware, and then sought her out with curiosity across the room as she had made to leave. No calculations, no schemes.

 

They leave the Times building where they’ve all met Dannie and Therese and grab beers at a seedy-looking bar that Carol wouldn’t have dared enter even as a daring and careless young undergrad. But the boys barge in, grab one side of a booth, and she squeezes in opposite, against the wall with Therese next to her and Genevieve on the end.

 

It’s the kind of dive where Phil can take off his jacket and talk in his shirtsleeves, where Dannie can rest his arm on the back of the seat and take up space all too casually, where she can catch Genevieve look their server up and down and the wink that she gives her, and where she and Therese can sit closer than needed to without suspicion, particularly on their crowded side of the booth.

 

Within a few minutes at Therese’s prompting she’s got them in stitches over a story about some hapless customer, and by the end of the night they’ve begged her to come along again next Friday. As they finally leave the bar Carol waves a hand and makes a noncommittal reference to prior commitments but thanks them for the invitation.

 

It’s at home that, while preparing for bed, Therese asks her to come with them, too.

 

“You’ll come out with us again, won’t you?” Therese’s Friday night plans are done and decided, and Carol is fine with that. Therese can do as she pleases. They’re not so dependent that she has to ask permission or risk hurting her feelings.

 

Carol stands in front of the vanity and meets Therese's gaze in its mirror and decides as she watches Therese walk toward her. She likes the boisterous but well-meaning company Therese keeps, and with Abby more often than not occupied the alternative would be to come home to an empty house and fall asleep like some sad, old spinster. In the grand scheme of things there aren’t _that_ many years separating them, and she can't allow such a fate to befall herself with so many nights left to catch up on everything she's missed out on. 

 

“Alright,” she agrees, watching Therese settle behind her and feeling her begin helping her undo the buttons of her dress. Therese places a kiss along the skin she exposes, one for each button undone, working her way down, and Carol closes her eyes, smiles as she feels fabric fall away and Therese’s hands cup her breasts. “And next time you can drive so I can really drink.”

 

-

 

She surmises that Therese's upbringing, left largely to the company of her own thoughts and the solitary production of photographs behind the camera, is part of it.

 

Therese is fiercely independent, and the bill would be a dance around a sensitive issue regardless of that. But Therese is not some kept woman, and though she has the means of footing the bill more than her share of the time Carol lets Therese offer as she sees fit. They’ve come to the bizarre resolution that they split it – some newfangled trend, probably. Carol had had to learn to stay her hand from reaching out to take the bill automatically, to pay commandingly without input from Therese like she had had before.

 

Over dinner one rainy autumn night she’s caught off-guard, busy finishing her drink as the bill is brought to them. Occupied, Therese is the one to reach out and take it, saying proudly, “I’ve got it.”

 

“Alright.” It makes her feel wanted and gratified, that Therese enjoys her company and is willing to let her pay for her things, and Carol's sure Therese feels similarly with the way she’s grinning despite the amount they’ve just dropped on dinner.

 

Finished, they leave and hail a cab, the rain reduced to a fine drizzle. After a stint in a snarl of traffic the cab deposits them at the sidewalk outside their apartment, and having let Therese get the meal Carol pays for the ride.

 

It’s clear as soon as the cab leaves, as it turns back into the stream of cars and the headlights angle away from the sidewalk, that the streetlight outside their apartment is out. It’s dark but not pitch-black, and as they walk up to the building Carol sees Therese offer her arm. She takes it, squeezes at the crook of her elbow teasingly as Therese helps her in her heels up the slippery stone steps to the door.

 

-

 

There are times, memorable ones, where they are in concord and Therese acts exactly as Carol would have expected any other young woman to.

 

She rummages through their dresser though she knows she won’t find her scarf there. It’s not where she keeps them, liable to be bundled up and wrinkled in the drawers, and she goes through the thing quickly enough. Rindy’s been over on one of her increasingly more common weekend visits, and a game of dress-up without her supervision has ended in a misplaced scarf, exactly the one she’d intended to wear on Monday.

 

There are few places in their bedroom that it may be that Carol hasn’t searched already, and so she goes over the closet once more, pushing aside her clothes on their hangers, ruffling through her belts and hats and shoes and looking around on the ground for good measure. But no luck.

 

She riffles only quickly through Therese’s side, a cursory search that is apparently sharp enough to displace a lovely chemise of Therese's from its hanger. It flutters to the ground, and eager not to wrinkle the silk she reaches to grab it up off the floor and put it back in its place. In her haste she moves too quickly and knocks the top off a shoebox as she picks up the chemise, and catches sight of what’s inside before blushing – more than a few sheets of paper, some newer than others, and is that the envelope that she remembers sealing and handing to Abby what feels like forever ago?

 

Therese has kept her letters she’s written her over the years, and she’s embarrassed and charmed at the same time. Carol closes the lid more securely, and hangs the chemise up before closing the closet door firmly against any further possible tiny intruders.

 

-

 

More often than not, though, Therese is quintessentially _Therese_.

 

Therese is not usually the first to start smoking, often prompted by Carol's own motion to retrieve a cigarette. It leaves Carol more often than not with the opportunity to light Therese's cigarette for her. Convention demands a man offer, even a stranger, and so she takes special satisfaction in reaching for her light as soon as Therese pulls out the little case she’s gotten her, a vintage thing from the shop that she’d scooped up before Abby had had the chance to take it home herself.

 

Carol reaches into her purse and produces her lighter, offers up the flame, and watches as Therese leans in, as she reaches out and her fingertips brush the back of her hand to steady the light with no thought to the sight they create.

 

Therese knows, of course, but doesn’t care, and Carol loves her for it – always had, even when she had whispered _don’t,_ panic at the thought of recognition closing tight around her heart. And now, stronger, she lets Therese’s fingers linger on her hand and smiles.

 

-

 

Yet being with Therese does not take _getting used to_.

 

Instead of rolling over to her corner of the bed or falling asleep after they make love, Therese is always against her somehow, finding a place in her arms as they sleep, or she in hers; a hand following the dip of her waist and resting on the curve of her hip; a thigh slipped contented and unmoving between her own, simply for the sensation.

 

If her life has felt always like some vague and unnameable exertion against an all-encompassing _something_ , then being with Therese is the exact opposite in the fluid ease at which they fit together, at their complimentary personalities and the warmth of their harmonious touches.

 

Therese cups her jaw with both hands, a languid, deep, and unhurried kiss that they've shared for an enjoyable amount of time. But Carol breaks it, turns her head just enough to press her lips to the inside of Therese's wrist. The delicate tendons and fair skin, the long fingers play her as well as the baby grand in the living room. She works her way up, to Therese’s palm, to fingers scented with her arousal from earlier, and hears Therese laugh, ticklish, at the sensation as she presses light kisses to each fingertip.

 

With Therese is it remarkable how effortless it is to be happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
